the popular sympathies "to the principles of loyalty and religious
reverence"--these were exactly the kind of new ideas which it would be
difficult to expound in the House of Commons or in a towns-meeting. In
the preface to _Coningsby_ the author tells us that, after reflection,
the form of fiction seemed to be the best method of influencing
opinion. These books then present us with the unique example of an
ambitious statesman resorting to romance as his means of reorganising a
political party.
There is another side to this feature which is also unique and
curiously full of interest. These romances are the only instances in
which any statesman of the first rank, who for years was the ruling
spirit of a great empire, has thrown his political conceptions and
schemes into an imaginative form. And these books, from _Vivian Grey_
(1825) to _Endymion_ (1880), extend over fifty-five years; some being
published before his political career seemed able to begin, some in the
midst of it, and the later books after it was ended. In the
grandiloquent style of the autobiographical prefaces, we may say that
they recall to us the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius, the _Political
Testament_ of Richelieu, and the _Conversations_ of Napoleon at St.
Helena.
In judging these remarkable works, we ought to remember that they are
not primarily romances at all, that they do not compete with genuine
romances, and they ought to be read for the qualities they have, not
for those in which they fail. They are in part autobiographical
sketches, meditations on society, historical disquisitions, and
political manifestoes. They are the productions of a statesman aiming
at a practical effect, not of a man of letters creating a work of
imaginative art. The creative form is quite subsidiary and
subordinate. It would be unreasonable to expect in them elaborate
drawing of character, complex plot, or subtle types of contemporary
life. Their aim is to paint the actual political world, to trace its
origin, and to idealise its possible development. And this is done,
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